Mattock

The mattock is a hand tool for breaking up ground — a heavy, single-bladed grub-hoe used for cultivation and trenching. It surfaces twice in the Old Testament: once in the Philistine arms-monopoly under Saul, and once in Isaiah's picture of land that has gone back to scrub.

Iron Tools Sharpened in Philistine Forges

In Saul's day the Philistines kept Israel disarmed by controlling the smithies. Israelites had to take their farm tools across the border for sharpening: "but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his plowshare, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock; yet they had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the three-pronged fork, and for the axes, and to set the goads" (1Sa 13:20-21). The mattock stands among the basic edge-tools of the agricultural household — beside plowshare, coulter, and ax — and the Philistine grip on the forges shows how comprehensive the embargo was.

Hills Once Worked With the Mattock

In Isaiah's oracle of judgement on the cultivated terraces of Judah, the mattock is the marker of land that had been worked carefully and is now abandoned: "And all the hills that were dug with the mattock, you will not come there for fear of briers and thorns; but it will be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep" (Isa 7:25). The hill-terraces no human hand will dig again become open range for grazing animals — the mattock-marks the sign of what was lost.